UV curable polyurethane (PU) coatings play a major role in a wide range of industries, due to their versatility, excellent performance and energy-efficient production and application. The global PU coating market was valued at USD 17.4 billion in 2021. Unfortunately, PU coatings still largely depend on fossil-based raw materials. Biobased alternatives are restricted to a negligible market volume, and, to date, there is no high-performance alternative with a biogenic content above 50% available. BIORING proposes a synthesis platform that combines biobased monomers and crosslinking agents to produce high-performance UV-curable PU coatings with >95% biogenic content. To reach this ambitious goal, we will develop the key pieces required to produce fully biogenic PU coatings from currently available biobased components. Our modular approach allows to fine-tune the characteristics of the coatings and adjust them to the requirements of highly demanding European industries. Furthermore, the platform will be able to adapt to future developments of new biobased building blocks. The development process will be guided by process simulations and modelling of product properties. We will demonstrate our approach for two use cases: automotive and construction, including not only functional validation, but also an economic analysis for future scale-up, where the components can be produced within a biorefinery. We will assess biodegradability as well as different recycling scenarios for coated products, according to the respective industry demands and standards. BIORING includes a thorough LCA and LCC. The BIORING consortium is composed of 12 partners, including RTOs, SMEs, large enterprises and an industrial association, from 5 European countries. The participation of producers and end users will guarantee access to stakeholders and open the doors to future scale-up. BIORING will allow companies to comply with European legislation and make them more competitive globally.

BIOSAFIRE goes back to nature to upgrade lignins and tannins, nature’s flame retardants, and unlock them for industrial application of biosbased flame retardants. Starting from already existing pilot plants, BIOSAFIRE upscales and broadens the available feedstocks to provide flame retardant in powder formats for five applications in four different sectors: naval, railway, home appliances and wood coatings. Featuring the same fire retardancy performance as chosen toxic benchmarks and enhancing safety and sustainability with an 80% of biobased content, BIOSAFIRE aspires to not only demonstrate its targets on 5 use cases, but also to create a material portfolio and a set of processing guidelines to enhance flame retardants substitution by the industry. This will open the possibility for biobased resins to exhibit good fire retardant properties. It will unlock a market opportunity worth USD 9.5 billion in 2028where Europe involves a 25% share and the sectors involved in the project 65% of the market share. BIOSAFIRE will design an industrial pilot plant to understand and overcome value chain barriers and create a robust techno economic assessment to promote the market uptake of the project results. BIOSAFIRE is an opportunity to test the EU JRC SSbD framework. The project will use a tiered approach to run the framework iteratively and provide a decision support toolset, link SSbD principles to early conceptual design and ultimately provide a software tool based on HEU SUNRISE methodology. The integration of SSH in the project will allow an enhanced social acceptance, further boosted by the training materials developed during the project.

SEASTARS main objective is to demonstrate a well-to-wake GHG emissions reduction of minimum 30% by 2030 (compared to 2008) as well as a 20% energy efficiency improvement (compared to 2022 reference performance) on eight market-ready vessel designs (4 retrofits and 4 newbuilds) addressing inland, short and high-seas shipping by combining different emission reduction and efficiency improvement technologies that will be market ready by the end of the EU project. The project aims at incorporating different technical efficiency measures directly related to the vessel’s hydrodynamic, by propeller-hull optimization and air lubrication implementation, the vessel’s machinery, by selecting different technologies such as fuel cells, electric motors, integrated solar panels, sails and electrochemical storage systems, and the vessel’s Energy, by exploring different alternative fuels such as biofuels, hydrogen, methanol, LNG, ammonia and different energy treatment systems like fuel preparation, fuel reforming, cold ironing, pre-combustion and post-combustion Carbone Capture Storage (CCS). Through the use of an advanced design methodology derived from Systems Engineering (SE), known as Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and a phased assembly-to-order approach, SEASTARS will help shipowners not only to evaluate the vessel’s emission reduction and efficiency enhancement but also to generate appropriate action-time plans for the decarbonization process and to quantify the related investment decisions, so to adapt their fleet to be always in line with the imposed regulation. Emission reduction and efficiency improvement technologies are designed as modules that can be added, scaled up or replaced in phases over time into a ship that is designed in a flexible and traceable way, enabling decreasing emissions progressively while maintaining a reasonable investment risk, controlled by the shipowners.

CARBIOW project addresses green transition and circular economy by proposing novel technologies that cover the whole process of conversion of organic waste to biofuels. On one hand, hard-to-utilize organic waste such as organic fraction of municipal solid waste and residues from biorefinery and biological processes are utilized to highlight a new bioenergy source. On the other hand, new technologies will be developed from TRL 2 to 5. The proposed technologies via CARBIOW enable Europe to take the lead and advancement in several fields of energy generation and energy sector decarbonization. Moreover, energy security, economical boost, local energy independenc,e and job creation are addressed. Torrefaction as an emerging technology converts the very heterogeneous and wet organic waste to a high-quality solid biofuel. Besides, torgas will be combusted with oxygen to generate energy for torrefaction, and to obtain nearly pure CO2. A novel technology i.e., oxygen-blown gasification in oxygen carrier aided systems will convert the torrefied organic waste to clean syngas with very high efficiency in terms of energy and yield. The syngas will be used in the Fischer-Tropsch process with a novel reactor and novel 3D printed catalysts aiming to produce aviation (kerosene) and marine (alcohols) biofuels. The CO2 from the oxy-conversion steps will be fixed in the resulting ashes from the same process via carbonization to make cement-based product. So, CARBIOW addresses another goal that is the decarbonization of cement industry, while making the biofuels to be carbon negative. The diversity and strength of the experts within the consortium of CARBIOW will guarantee the technological, technical, and societal advancement of what is proposed, most importantly, the exploitation and perspective of the whole process will be evaluated by the leaders and industrial sites to pledge the feasibility of the scale-up and further development of the proposed process.